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AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'. 



LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 


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A. R. SPOFFORD, 

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Librarian of Congress. 


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(From the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1892, pages 173-195.) 



WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 

1894. 

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LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 

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BY 


A. R. SPOFFORD, 

Librarian of Congress. 



(From tlie Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1892, pages 173-195.) 





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WASHINGTON: 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE!. 

1894. 









♦ 







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* 


LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 


By A. R. Spofford, Librarian of Congress. 


In attempting to sketch an outline of the history of the lot¬ 
tery system in the United States, I propose no other aim than 
to rescue from the oblivion of obsolete statutes and forgotten 
journals some facts which may prove of historical interest. 
If, perchance, I am reminded that it is no part of the func¬ 
tions of an historical association to enter upon the domain of 
ethics, it is to be remembered that the history of morals has 
long been recognized as one of the most interesting and profit¬ 
able of historical investigations. It is not my purpose, how¬ 
ever, to treat of the morality of lotteries, but to present, so 
far as possible in the short time allotted, a brief of their his¬ 
tory. If the manners and customs of a people are of peren¬ 
nial interest to their posterity, this leaf out of the social his¬ 
tory of America may perhaps be found not wholly unworthy 
of notice. 

The genesis of the English settlement of Virginia presents 
the first record found of the lottery in connection with our 
own country. In the third charter of King James to the Virginia 
Company of London, in 1612, full power and license is granted, 
with much legal tautology, to that company “ to set forth, erect, 
and publish one or more lottery or lotteries, to have continu¬ 
ance for the space of one whole year next after the opening of 
the same.” These lotteries were to be opened in London or in 
any towns within the realm of England, with such prizes, agents, 
etc., as the Company found convenient, and all the promoters 
were to be put under oath for their true dealing, that none ad¬ 
venturing in the lottery might be defrauded of their moneys, 
“or evil and indirectly dealt withal in their said adventures.” 

173 



174 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


The lotteries thus sanctioned were largely subscribed to, the 
Grocers’ Company of London and other guilds taking shares, 
and we even find two London churches adventuring £6 
in Virginia lottery tickets. The first lottery was drawn in 
both June and July, 1612, and a second was drawn November 
17, 1615, all moneys of the adventurers being paid in to Sir 
Thomas Smith, treasurer, u to inable us to make good supplies 
to the colonie in Virginia.” The drawings were often post¬ 
poned to enable the numbers of the lottery to be filled up. 
The amount realized from them was about £29,000, but upon the 
House of Commons protesting against the Virginia Company’s 
lotteries as an illegal raising of money without Parliamentary 
sanction, they were terminated in 1621, by an order in council. 

The earliest notice of an American lottery I have found 
(although it was not the first) was in Andrew Bradford’s 
American Weekly Mercury, Philadelphia, February 23, 1720. 
It advertises a “new brick house, corner of Third and Arch,” 
for which 350 tickets, at 20 shillings each, were to be drawn. 
u John Bead and Henry Frogley have given £500 bond to the 
mayor to see a fair drawing.” Soon after, lotteries appear to 
have become common, and their attendant evils led to the pas¬ 
sage of an act as early as 1729, by the legislature, forbidding 
lotteries under a penalty of £100. 

This, however, went no further than to prohibit unauthor¬ 
ized lotteries, for those permitted by special legislative grant 
continued to flourish. 

As early as 1735 we find the proprietors of Pennsylvania 
proposing a new method of selling lands in the province by 
lottery. This scheme was to sell 100,000 acres of land at 
£15 10s. per 100 acres, making the sum of £15,500, and that the 
same be purchased by the sale of 7,750 tickets at £2 each, also 
amounting to £15,500. The subscription not having filled up, 
this lottery was never drawn, but the tickets actually sold 
were recognized as titles to lands. 

Many cases are found in the early history of Philadelphia— 
then our largest city—of lotteries organized for public objects. 
For many years after this practice began to prevail it was not 
regarded at all as a kind of gambling; the most reputable 
citizens were engaged in these lotteries, either as selected 
managers or as liberal subscribers. It was looked upon as a 
kind of voluntary tax for paving streets, erecting wharves, 
buildings, etc., with a contingent profitable return for such 




LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 175 

subscribers as held the lucky numbers. All the subscribers 
and managers contributed their influence to secure the sale of 
all the tickets, so as to insure the largest return for the object 
to which the funds remaining above the prizes drawn were 
pledged. 

It is curious to find the early defense of the colonies against 
foreign invasion helped on by the aid of the lottery. In 1748 
leading citizens of Philadelphia (Benj. Franklin, Edward Ship- 
pen and others), having defeated the Quaker policy of non- 
resistance, organized a lottery to raise £3,000 needed for the 
erection of a battery on the Delaware. There were 2,842 prizes 
held out to subscribers, and 7,158 blanks. Tickets were put 
at 40s, and the common council took 2,000 tickets to aid the 
cause of defending the city against attack, some of which 
drew prizes. The scheme was successful in raising the needed 
money, and a fine battery of cannon was soon planted below 
the city on the bank of the Delaware. 

In 1748 a lottery was organized at Philadelphia to raise 
9,375 u pieces of eight” 1 for public use. 

In 1756 another lottery was formed to raise the same amount 
for a college and academy in Philadelphia. 

In Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette of February 22, 1759 is 
a u scheme of a lottery for raising 1,200 pieces of eight for fin¬ 
ishing the English church in the city of Hew Brunswick.” 
The advertisement avers that this drawing is u solely for the 
promotion and honor of religion,” and is in u imitation of many 
of their pious neighbors in this and adjacent provinces.” 

By the year 1761 lotteries had become so common in Penn¬ 
sylvania, that the law forbidding them may be said to have 
proven a dead letter. Almost the whole community speculated 
in tickets, and the objects for which the numerous schemes 
were developed, were extremely various. Among those for 
education was a lottery to raise £1,125 for the use of a public 
English and High Dutch school; and to raise £6,000 for Hew 
Jersey College. Other schemes provided for paving the streets 
of Philadelphia, for bridging Conestoga and Octorara Creeks; 
for a lighthouse at Cape Henlopen; for a company of rangers, 
and for £500 for the use of the colony of Hew r Jersey. Strange 
as it may appear in modern eyes, the larger number of lotteries 
at this period were for ecclesiastical objects. Thus we read of 
lotteries to gather in £1,350 for St. James’ Church, Lancaster; 


ir Ihe “ piece of eight” was equivalent to one dollar. 




176 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


£500 to enlarge Trinity Church, Oxford; £450 for the Presby¬ 
terian Church, Middletown; 3,000 pieces of eight to finish the 
Episcopal Church in Third street; £3,000 for a new Presbyte¬ 
rian Church in Baltimore, and 3,000 pieces of eight to finish 
the steeple of the Second Presbyterian Church, Third and 
Arch streets. 1 

A much advertised scheme for a lottery to raise funds for 
public baths and pleasure grounds brought out organized op¬ 
position from the clergy and others, who united in a protest to 
the governor against it. It was said that this kind of gam¬ 
bling was associated with much dissipation and immorality. 
The anti-lottery efforts had the effect to pass a more stringent 
law through the legislature in 1761, declaring all lotteries, 
public or private, to be common nuisances, and opposed to the 
good of the province. A penalty of £500 for erecting a lottery, 
with £25 fine for advertising or selling tickets, was imposed. 
The rights of existing lotteries were reserved, and £3,000 was 
raised for the streets, so that the first public paving ever done 
in that city was paid for out of the avails of a lottery. 

John Leacock, in 1773, set up a lottery for the encourage¬ 
ment of the grape growing industry. The glass works, at 
Kensington, to raise money for carrying on their business, in¬ 
stituted a lottery the same year. 

In 1784, in pursuance of petitions from Philadelphia, the 
legislature passed an act for a State lottery, to raise $42,000 
to improve the roads leading into the city, which was success¬ 
ful in attaining the object. 

In 1796 occurred a warm struggle in the Pennsylvania legis¬ 
lature over lottery bills. The senate passed a bill to authorize 
a drawing to raise funds for Dickinson College. The house 
inserted amendments to raise by lottery $15,000 for piers at 
Chester on the Delaware, $16,000 to finish a town hall and 
market in Philadelphia, and $8,000 for a building and land¬ 
ings in Southwark. The senate refused to concur in any of 
these, and the whole bill failed. 

In 1811 the Union Canal .Company was chartered by the 
State to open water communication with the western counties, 
with power to supply Philadelphia with water, and to raise 
for these purposes the sum of $340,000 by a lottery. Under 
these powers an annual drawing was held, and the privilege 
being continued and enlarged by a new act in 1821, the lottery 

1 Scharf & Westcott’s History of Philadelphia, Vol. 1, p. 255. 






LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 177 

schemes advertised and drawn from 1812 to 1831, inclusive (or 
twenty years), aggregated the enormous sum of $21,248,891. 1 
Yet out of this great aggregate the Union Canal Company 
realized less than the $340,000 originally granted. 

The wide-spread evils growing out of the extension of the 
lottery system in Pennsylvania, by the act of 1821, led to the 
formation, in 1834, of the u Pennsylvania Society for the Sup¬ 
pression of Lotteries.” In an address to the people, the society 
declared that the act of the legislature prohibiting all lotteries 
after December 31, 1833, was systematically violated. 

Lottery offices for sale of tickets of Delaware, Maryland, 
and Virginia lotteries were scattered through Philadelphia. 
The corrupting tendency of lotteries was dwelt upon, and it 
was declared that all claims of public benefit conferred, where 
the proceeds of lotteries were devoted to such objects, were 
deceptive and illusory. 

The rapid growth in Pennsylvania of the lottery system is 
shown in the fact that in 1809 only three offices for the sale of 
lottery tickets existed in Philadelphia j in 1827, the number 
was computed at 60; in 1831, they amounted to 177, and in 1833 
to more than 200. In the single year 1832, tickets in 420 lot¬ 
tery schemes were sold, whose prices amounted to $53,136,930; 
but these schemes represented all parts of the Union having 
organized lotteries. These sales were all expressly prohibited 
by law, yet in the neglect of official duty by its officers, and 
in the careless state of public opinion, the laws were constantly 
violated, until they became virtually dead letters. These for¬ 
eign lotteries, authorized in the respective States, were a vir¬ 
tual tax upon Pennsylvanians, for the benefit of internal im¬ 
provements outside the State, and of the companies promoting 
the lotteries. The sales of tickets were reported as amount¬ 
ing to $1,500,000 a year, in Philadelphia alone, the greater 
part of which was absolute loss. The drawings were weekly 
or fortnightly, and tickets were so subdivided that 12J cents was 
sufficient to purchase a chance. The poor, and especially the 
servant class, were, to a very wide extent, the patrons of the 
lotteries. Hand bills were sown broadcast, street placards in 
gigantic figures, appealing to the imagination of the credulous, 
were exhibited, and the emissaries of the lottery office even 
importuned passers-by in the public streets. 

'Hazard’s Register of Pennsylvania, Vol. 9, p. 136. 

S. Mis. 57-12 




178 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


It was not without many attempts to resist the repeal of the 
anti-lottery laws, and to secure renewal of the privileges, that 
Pennsylvania succeeded in putting the ban of public reproba¬ 
tion upon such schemes. In 1843, according to the Philadel¬ 
phia North American, upwards of $3,000 was raised for the 
purpose of “ effecting a law” to legalize lotteries, the proposed 
object being “to enable the State to liquidate its debt.” 

In Connecticut, in 1750, a lottery was authorized to raise a 
fund for building a new edifice for Yale College. 

As early as 1744 the Massachusetts province granted au¬ 
thority to raise by lottery £7,500 to meet the expenses of gov¬ 
ernment. In 1749 Swansea, Mass., was empowered to raise 
funds by lottery to repair Miles’ bridge, and Newbury, thenext 
year, was granted leave to raise £12,000 for a bridge over the 
Merrimac. In 1757 the manufacture of glass in Braintree was 
aided by a lottery, sanctioned by the general court. Har¬ 
vard College, in 1772, its funds running low, received special 
permission for a lottery scheme to erect Stoughton Hall, which 
privilege was renewed in 1794. This lottery prolonged its 
drawings for over ten years, producing $18,400 net. The col¬ 
lege invested $2,000 in tickets, and itself drew the principal 
prize of $10,000 on ticket numbered 18,547. 

In 1806 another lottery grant in favor of Harvard College 
produced $29,000 to aid in the building of Holworthy Hall, 
and to repair Massachusetts Hall. The president and fellows 
appointed agents, and advertised the scheme of the lottery in 
the journals of the day. 

During the Revolutionary war leave was granted to raise 
money by lottery for the officers and soldiers of Massachusetts 
in the field. 

In the letters of Samuel Sewall is one, October 12, 1719, in 
which he says: “I dined with the court last Friday, when 
many expressed their dislike of the lotteries practiced of late, 
as differing little from gaming for money, and as being really 
pernicious to trade. Taking notice of no less than four lot¬ 
teries in the inclosed News-Letter, I would juopound it to con¬ 
sideration, whether it will not be expedient to put some stop 
to the progress of it ? ” 1 

In 1758 we find the people of Charlestown in town meeting 
assembled voting to ask the general court for authority to 


1 Mass. Hist. Coll., 6tk series, Vol. v, p. 102. 






LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 179 

organize a lottery to raise funds for paving Main street. This 
petition was granted, and Charlestown lottery, No. 1, was 
advertised. The scheme embraced an issue of 6,000 tickets 
at $2 each; the prizes numbered 1,255, to return $10,800 to 
those buying tickets, and leave $1,200 to pay for the street 
paving. 

In 1779 there was another lottery authorized for $60,000, to 
repair the streets of Charlestown. The same year the repairs 
of Long wharf were provided for by a $250,000 lottery. 

In 1780 no less a sum than $200,000 was authorized to be 
raised by lottery to mend the roads in the counties of Berk¬ 
shire and Hampshire. 

In 1812 a lottery was authorized to raise $16,000 to repair 
the beach at Plymouth. This lottery issued schemes in the 
space of nine years to the prodigious amount of $886,439; yet 
the entire sum realized to the town of Plymouth was only 
$9,876. 

A lottery to buy for Harvard College Joseph Pope’s orrery 
(or planetarium) was authorized in 1788 by special act. The 
reason assigned in the preamble of the act was u to encour¬ 
age the efforts of ingenuity and the advancement of science 
and the public good.” Three thousand tickets, at $2 each, 
were offered, with one capital prize of $1,000, one of $300, one 
of $200, two of $100, three of $50, fifteen of $20, and six hun¬ 
dred and seventy-three of $3 each. The drawing took place 
at the state-house March 10 to 14, 1789. The scheme was 
successful, and after paying premiums of about $2,700 and 
$2,250 to Mr. Pope for his orrery, a balance of some $400 
above expenses was paid into Harvard College treasury 

Among public buildings erected by the aid of lotteries in 
America, Faneuil Hall in Boston possesses most historical 
interest. After the burning of the first edifice in 1761, at a 
time of much financial depression, the selectmen of Boston were 
instructed by a town meeting to petition the general court to 
empower some suitable person to raise by way of lottery such 
a sum of money as would be sufficient for the rebuilding of 
Faneuil Hall. The legislature granted the petition, and the 
profits of the lottery, which had several drawings, extending 
to 1764, were applied to building the second Faneuil Hall, 
which held the town meetings of the Revolution, and still stands 
as a place of public assembly. 

The year 1790 was marked by a singularly wide development 


180 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


of the lottery passion. In Massachusetts and Pennsylvania 
the mania was especially rife. Bev. Jeremy Belknap wrote 
from Boston to Ebenezer Hazard: “You could scarcely imag¬ 
ine what a rage we have here for lotteries. Eight thousand 
tickets sold in four days in the Marblehead lottery. I wonder 
Secretary Hamilton does not hit upon a lottery. It would be 
more popular than laying a duty on salt, which, if he does, will 
greatly injure our fisheries.” 1 Hazard himself (then in busi¬ 
ness at Philadelphia) sold 500 of the Boston lottery tickets, 
and thought that he could have sold 1,000 if he had received 
them. He sends to Bev. Dr. Belknap a ticket which had 
drawn a prize of $8 for collection at Boston. 2 

At the beginning of the present century lotteries were re¬ 
garded in Massachusetts as a ready and not improper means 
of raising funds for colleges, academies, and churches. They 
were made as popular and alluring as possible. “A represen¬ 
tation of Fortune blindfolded and balancing herself upon a 
wheel caught the eye of the reader. One hand of the god¬ 
dess held a cornucopia, from which a stream of coins was pour¬ 
ing into the hat of an improvident young person who was re¬ 
duced to that single article of clothing j in the other the fickle 
lady brandished a scroll bearing the inscription 6 $10,000.’” 3 

Already, as early as 1719, the general court of Massachusetts 
enacted that “all private lotteries are common and public 
nuisances.” In 1733 a more stringent act for their suppression 
was passed, followed by others in 1753 and 1785. Still, these 
laws were frequently violated, and the legislature itself, in plain 
frustration of their spirit and intent, passed many special acts 
permitting these “common and public nuisances.” At length, 
in 1821, a joint committee of the legislature made a remarkable 
report upon the mischief of the permitted sale of lottery tick¬ 
ets from other states in Massachusetts. The abuses of the 
system were laid bare, and it was shown that in a single case 
nearly $500,000 had been collected from tickets out of the hard- 
earned savings of Massachusetts citizens. 

In 1825 a commission appointed to report upon ways and 
means for building a canal from Boston to the Hudson Biver 
proposed to the legislature a lottery scheme for raising funds 
» to carry out that enterprise. This commission estimated that 

1 Mass. Hist. Coll., 5th series, Vol. iii, p. 217. 

3 Ibid., pp. 251, 301. 

3 J. P. Quincy in Memorial History of Boston, Vol. iv, p. 16. 




LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY—SPOFFORD. 181 

the amount annually expended in Massachusetts for the pur¬ 
chase of lottery tickets was over $250,000, and they saw no 
reason why, with such sums invested in these schemes, notwith¬ 
standing a law of the State prohibiting such traffic altogether, 
the canal might not be helped forward, under express legislative 
sanction, as a great and beneficent public enterprise. Their 
arguments, however, did not prevail, and the canal was not 
built. 

In 1833 an act was passed, which put an end to the sale of 
lottery tickets in Massachusetts. 

As early as the year 1721 lotteries had become so common in 
the colony of New York that an act of assembly was passed 
“to prevent lotteries within the Province of New York.” 

Nevertheless, the practice was not only permitted thereafter, 
but sometimes authorized by express act, for we find Governor 
Clinton, in a letter to the Lords of Trade, September 27, 1747, 
explaining his reasons for giving assent to an act of assembly 
“for raising 2250 pounds by way of lottery for the advance¬ 
ment of learning, which is absolutely necessary, and much 
wanted in the Province.” 1 

In 1748 another special act was passed by the New York 
assembly for raising the sum of £1,800 by a lottery, for the 
purpose of founding a college. Again, in 1757, an act was 
passed to raise £1,125 by lottery, to finish a new jail in New 
York city. 

In 1774 a church was proposed to be erected by a lottery in 
Brooklyn, for the public religious service of the Church of 
England, the Dutch Reformed being then the only existing 
worship. 

From a presentment against lotteries by the grand jury of 
the city of New York, made in 1830, it appeared that at that 
time fifty-two lottery drawings a year took place, with osten¬ 
sible prizes amounting to $9,270,000. The amount of the 
people’s money sunk in them, though not ascertainable, was 
prodigious, and their effect upon morals was presented as per¬ 
nicious, creating a spirit of gambling which is productive of 
idleness, vicious habits, and the ruin of credit and character. 

By act of the New York legislature all lottery privileges 
were prohibited in that State after December 31, 1833. 

One of the notable facts in the issues of the early press is 
the extraordinary number and variety of public lottery schemes 


documents Col. Hist. New York, Vol. VI, p. 379. 






182 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


which they advertised. In 1790-’91 we find the New York 
lottery with its regular drawings filling a half column with its 
list of prizes; the Massachusetts semi-annual State lottery, 
to be drawn in the Representatives’ chamber at the state- 
house, tickets for prizes (from $8 t<5 $10,000) to be had of the 
treasurer of the State and at the bookstores; the Delaware 
State lottery, for raising £1,000 for the use of the State; the 
Lancaster lottery, to raise £1,350 for St. James’s church; a 
lottery to raise a large sum for. paving the streets of Phila¬ 
delphia; another lottery to finish a new Episcopal church, and 
many more. 

In 1776 the Continental Congress authorized a United States 
lottery to raise money for the army then in the field. 

The first drawing was at College Hall, Philadelphia, August 
11,1777. One hundred thousand tickets were offered, under 
a complicated scheme, by which each ticket was subdivided 
into four, and the drawing was in four classes, with seven 
leading Philadelphia citizens as managers. The tickets were 
to the amount of $500,000 net, after deducting 15 per cent for 
expenses; the prizes were also to the amount of half a million 
dollars, running from $50,000 down to $20. The prizes drawn 
of over $50 in amount were made payable in treasury bank¬ 
notes redeemable at the end of five years. It was thus hoped 
to realize the whole amount of the lottery in ready money. 

By a resolution of May 2, 1778, the drawing of the second 
class of the lottery was postponed until January 1,1779. 

Another resolution, June 3,1778, directed lists of the prizes 
drawn to be printed in pamphlets and distributed to all post¬ 
masters, lottery agents, and sellers of tickets in the several 
States, u for the free inspection of the several adventurers;” 
and that the printers in the States be requested to publish 
the whole in weekly portions. 

One of the early foreign loans authorized by Congress, soon 
after the war of the Revolution, was associated with the prin¬ 
ciple of the lottery. In 1784 John Adams, then minister to 
Holland, negotiated with Amsterdam bankers a loan of 
2,000,000 guilders, at 4 per cent interest, agreeing to distribute 
among the subscribers, by lot, in subsequent years, obligations 
of the United States for 690,000 guilders, as a bonus or pre¬ 
mium on the loan. These obligations bore 4 per cent, but were 
payable at the option of the United States within six months 
after their date. Other bonuses and bankers’ commissions car- 


LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 183 


ried the amount which the United States agreed to pay for an 
immediate accommodation of 2,000,000 guilders, up to 2,891,800 
guilders. Mr. Adams was fearful that this enormous usury 
would cause its negotiator to be blamed, but he wrote to Dr. 
Franklin that he despaired of obtaining the money on any 
lower terms, as the credit of the United States was low, many 
bills having gone to protest, and the market for loans being 
very stringent. But by ciphering out the terms of payment, it 
appears that if the United States cashed the obligations dis¬ 
tributed by lottery within six months after the drawings (which 
was actually done) the 4 per cent interest on the loan, with the 
large bonus and premiums added, amounted to only 6J per cent 
annual interest. 

The foundation of Washington City as the national capital 
was not without some association with the principle of the lot¬ 
tery, once so widely prevalent. In 1793, the funds for erection 
of the public buildings running low, the Commissioners of the 
District of Columbia organized a lottery to raise $350,000 “for 
the improvement of the Federal City.” They appointed Sam¬ 
uel Blodget, an enterprising citizen of great public spirit 
(author of the first American statistical work, “ Economica ”), 
as supervisor of the buildings and general agent for the lot¬ 
tery, at £600 salary per annum. The tickets were $7 each, and 
of the 50,000 to be issued, 16,737 represented prizes, and 33,263 
blanks. The principal prize was u one superb hotel, with baths, 
outhouses, etc., to cost $50,000.” The cash prizes ran from 
$25,000 down to $10 each. The Commissioners say the scheme 
was drawn up u with the previous approbation of the Presi¬ 
dent.” In a letter to Washington, proposing a second lottery, 
they state that the tickets of the first were u taken up with 
avidity.” The first scheme was measurably successful, but the 
second proposed lottery was never drawn. 

In 1795 the legislature of Maryland passed an act “to 
authorize two lotteries in the city of Washington,” conferring 
upon Daniel Carroll, Thomas Law, and associates, power to 
raise by lottery the sum of $52,500, to improve the means of 
communication by the construction of a canal in Maryland 
and the District of Columbia. 

This act was fully recognized by an act of Congress, ap¬ 
proved by Madison, May 6,1812, which declared the powers 
therein vested should thereafter be exercised by the Washing¬ 
ton Canal Company. The conditions of the act of Congress 


184 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


required a bond of $100,000 by the Canal Company to secure 
“the payment of the prizes drawn by the fortunate adventurers 
in said lotteries and the residue to the completing of the canal 
in the city of Washington and draining the marshes contig¬ 
uous thereto.” 

The lottery thus authorized was (naturally enough, since it 
had the direct sanction of Congress) called a “national lot¬ 
tery,” and widely advertised. Tickets were placed on sale in 
leading cities, and such sales at Norfolk, Va., brought this 
lottery into the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1820, 
upon grave questions of constitutionality. The law of Vir¬ 
ginia prohibited the sale of the tickets of any “foreign lot¬ 
tery” within that State. The ticket sellers in Norfolk were 
indicted, and carried the case before Chief Justice Marshall, 
vlio awarded a summons to bring the case before the United 
States Court. Soon after this the Virginia General Assembly 
passed resolutions (in January, 1821) declaring that the 
Supreme Court had no rightful jurisdiction, under the Consti¬ 
tution, to correct the judgment of the Virginia court against 
the sellers of lottery tickets, and entered their “ solemn protest” 
against such judicial interference. The case was decided by 
the Supreme Court at Washington, in February, 1821, to the 
effect that the act of Congress could not authorize the sale of 
lottery tickets in States prohibiting it by State law. 

It appears that John Quincy Adams was troubled, when 
President, by solicitations to approve of a quadruple lottery 
scheme, sanctioned by the corporation of Washington city, to 
raise $40,000. In May, 1825, Mr. Adams, fortified by the opin¬ 
ion of Attorney-General Wirt, refused to approve of the lot¬ 
tery. 

In 1842 Congress passed an act, still in force, providing for 
the suppression of the sale of all lottery tickets in the District 
of Columbia. 

By a section of the Revised Statutes of the United States 
all postmasters are prohibited from acting as lottery agents. 

By an act of Congress September 18, 1890, the constitution¬ 
ality of which came before the Supreme Court, all letters, circu¬ 
lars, or newspapers containing advertisements of lotteries or gift 
enterprises of any kind, or transmitting purchase money for 
lottery tickets are forbidden to be carried in the mail or deliv¬ 
ered by any postmaster in the United States, under penalty 
of a fine of not over $500, or imprisonment not more than one 


LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SI^OFFORD. 185 

year, or both. Postmasters are also required to return to the 
senders registered letters addressed to any known lottery con¬ 
ductor or agent, but no authority is conferred to open any let¬ 
ters whatever. The Supreme Court held the act valid, the 
right to circulate lottery matter not being a fundamental 
right, and that it was no abridgment of the freedom of the 
press for the Government to refuse to become an agent in 
circulating printed matter deemed by Congress injurious to 
the public morals. 

In 1839-’40 Maryland passed acts totally abolishing the 
State lottery system, and prohibiting the drawings or dealing 
in tickets in the State lotteries or in any foreign lotteries 
whatever. This act was not very effectual in putting an end 
to the practice, but in the constitution of the State, adopted 
in 1851, the opponents of lotteries succeeded in ingrafting a 
provision that u no lottery grant shall ever hereafter be author¬ 
ized by the legislature.” As, however, the existing charters 
termed u Maryland consolidated lottery grants,” had not yet 
expired, the constitution provided for the choice by the people, 
at each legislative election, of a u commissioner of lotteries,” 
to discharge certain duties connected with the fair drawing of 
such authorized schemes. It was further constitutionally 
enacted that after April 1, 1859, no lottery scheme should be 
drawn for any purpose whatever, nor any lottery ticket sold, 
in the State of Maryland. The commissioner was required to 
secure to the State the annual lottery revenue received dur¬ 
ing five years previous, until the definitive cessation of all 
lottery privileges. 

In the u instructions ” of King George III to Lord Dun- 
more, Governor of Virginia, dated February 7, 1771, occurs an 
injunction that the Governor should not give his assent to any 
legislative acts u for raising money by any private or public 
lotteries whatsoever.” This was occasioned by u great frauds 
and abuses committed” through lotteries set up by private 
persons by authority of acts of the legislature in several of 
the American colonies. 

It is not surprising to find George Washington participat¬ 
ing in the lotteries of his time, for in what object of public 
improvement was he not interested ? Tickets are preserved 
of the u Mountain Koad Lottery,” dated in the year 1768, and 
signed by Washington. One of these is in the Toner collec¬ 
tion in the Library of Congress. In his MS. account books, 


186 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


P 


preserved in the Department of State, is this entry, under 
date of May 4, 1769: 

By cash paid Peyton Randolph, esq., for my tenth of 100 Tickets taken 
in Partnership with himself and others in Col. Byrd’s Lottery, £50. 

In December, 1769, in Washington’s personal diary, appears 
this entry : 

Dined at the attorney’s, and went in evening to draw Col. Moore’s Lot¬ 
tery. 

The same business engaged him three successive evenings. 
And in the following year: 

June 4, 1770. By Col. George Brooke, for 4 tickets in Col. Bd. Moore’s 

Lottery, & Int’t on them.£41 0 4 

The first entry records Washington’s modest share of ten 
tickets, at five pounds sterling each, in the lottery organized 
for the sale of the famous estate of Col. Wm. Byrd, called 
Westover, comprising a large domain on James River. This 
was authorized in 1756, and enabled payment to be made of 
the debts of a heavily involved estate. Without the lottery, 
Mr. Jefferson says, the lands would have sold at from one-half 
to one-fourth of their value, and the creditors would have lost 
the greater part of their claims. 

This way of disposing of real estate was not uncommon in 
Virginia more than a century ago. It was unrestricted by 
law until 1769, when the legislature, moved by the too wide 
growth of the speculative mania, enacted that no lottery should 
be drawn without being authorized by a special act. These 
special acts, however, were sufficiently numerous, as appears 
from a partial list of seventy legally permitted lotteries in the 
thirty-eight years between 1782 and 1820, cited by Mr. Jeffer¬ 
son. 1 The purposes for which these lottery schemes were 
organized were quite various. Five of them (1790 to 1816) 
were for clearing rivers and building bridges, including one 
to raise $50,000 for the Dismal Swamp improvements. Nine¬ 
teen were for educational objects, chiefly in aid of academies, 
with two lotteries for William and Mary College. Ten were 
for opening or improving public roads; ten to enable counties 
or towns to pay for streets or other improvements; two for 
charitable societies; eight to erect or to complete churches in 
Virginia towns, and six for private individuals u to erect a 
paper mill;” “ for sufferers by fire in Lexington;” u to raise 




‘Jefferson’s Works, Vol. 9, pp. 502-505. 










LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 187 

£4,000 for William Tatham, to enable him to complete his 
geographical work,” etc. 

Besides these special lottery acts, the Virginia legislature, 
between 1814 and 1820, derived a part of the state revenue 
from lotteries organized for the express purpose of aiding in 
the support of the Government. 

I now come to the lottery authorized by the Virginia legisla¬ 
ture in 1826, for the benefit of Thomas Jefferson. That illus¬ 
trious man, returning from the highest executive office in 1809 
to a long-neglected estate at Monticello, struggled for years 
with adverse fortune, failing crops, wasteful slave labor, low 
prices, depreciated currency, an expensive hospitality, and a 
constantly growing debt and interest account. He was an in¬ 
grained optimist, believing always in better times, and while 
careful and scrupulous in his accounts, his generous nature 
led him to bestow many charities which his straitened in¬ 
come could not afford. More than any man in America, he 
was frequented in his retirement by a throng of friends, admir¬ 
ers, and lion-hunters, who found bed and board at the u hotel 
Jefferson,” until its proprietor was almost literally eaten out of 
house and home. The guests consumed more than Monticello 
produced, and not even the careful management of his grand¬ 
son, Randolph, could retrieve his rapidly waning fortunes. 
At length, early in 1826, in a season of the severest depres¬ 
sion, Jefferson, then in his 83d year, u An old man broken with 
the storms of State,” turned as a last resource to the device of 
selling his lands by a lottery, for which legislative sanction 
was sought at Richmond. The act passed (not without stren¬ 
uous opposition), and the gratitude of Jefferson drew from him 
some expressions almost pathetic in his letters to friends. 
Before the lottery was organized, or the lands had been valued 
by the appointed appraisers, the public interest was so ex¬ 
cited in behalf of the venerable statesman that it was re¬ 
solved to save his estate from alienation, and a lively sympathy 
produced voluntary subscriptions in New York, Philadelphia, 
and Baltimore to the amount of some $18,000. The amount for 
which Jefferson was involved, however, was more than $80,000; 
and while the subscriptions served to cheer his declining days 
(for the pride which had refused aid from the Virginia treas¬ 
ury in former years was now subdued by adversity), they 
hindered rather than helped the extrication of his estate from 
its embarrassments. The first endeavor had been to dispose 


188 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


of the lottery privilege to parties familiar with such organiza¬ 
tions in the northern cities; and had the hooks been opened 
and the tickets everywhere offered while the public sympathy 
was still fresh, the success of the plan might have been fully 
assured. But it was delayed by the volunteer subscriptions, 
until the death of the illustrious beneficiary, the same year, 
caused the interest in saving to him his patrimony to subside. 
It was found impracticable to dispose of the tickets in the lot¬ 
tery, and the whole project was ultimately abandoned. The 
result was a forced sale of Monticello and Mr. Jefferson’s 
other estates to pay his debts; and the considerable deficiency 
was most honorably made up by his executor, Thomas Jeffer¬ 
son Randolph. 

In its constitution, adopted in 1850, Virginia ratified a pro¬ 
vision that no lottery should thereafter be authorized by law; 
and the buying or selling of tickets or chances in any lottery, 
not heretofore authorized, was prohibited. The same provi¬ 
sion is in the existing constitution. 

A singular historical error occurs in the Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, where it gravely asserts, in an article on lotteries, 
that “before 1820 at least seventy acts were passed by Con¬ 
gress authorizing lotteries for various public purposes, such as 
schools, roads, etc.” The facts are that Congress has passed 
but three lottery acts from the earliest days of the Continen¬ 
tal Congress until this day; and the industrious but careless 
encyclopaedist has confounded Mr. Jefferson’s list of 70 lotteries 
authorized by Virginia laws with the legislation of the United 
States Congress. 

The history of lotteries in the State of Kentucky shows how 
the survival of a once legalized game of chance for public ob¬ 
jects may be perverted to purposes of private gain. In 1838 
the Kentucky legislature empowered the city of Frankfort to 
raise, by a lottery, $100,000 for the use of city schools and the 
construction of waterworks. The managers of this lottery 
(which had long become functus officio) sold certain undrawn 
classes of schemes in it to Simmons and Dickinson, who, in 
1877, carried on what they termed “The Kentucky State Lot¬ 
tery,” ostensibly under the wing of the State’s sanction; this, 
too, notwithstanding a Kentucky statute, passed in 1816, pro¬ 
hibiting the sale of any lottery tickets, except as authorized 
,by special act. The legislature in 1878 went further, and re¬ 
pealed all lottery grants existing in the State of Kentucky. 


LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 189 

The managers of this lottery were convicted and their lucra¬ 
tive business stopped by the State courts. 

In 1880 in Louisville appeared the flaming prospectus of 
the “Commonwealth Distribution Company,” whose managers 
were shortly after indicted and deprived of their means of ap¬ 
propriating the money of the people. 

Another bold attempt to convert a chartered lottery priv¬ 
ilege for public purposes to private gain was in the assump¬ 
tion by the managers of the “Kentucky State Lottery” of a 
privilege granted in 1839 to Paducah, Ky., to raise $100,000 
by lottery, for education and wharf construction; the court of 
appeals put an end to this claim in like manner. 

These illegal concerns, however, subsisted for years, draw¬ 
ing profits from the credulity of the public, and with offices in 
New York, etc., advertising the drawings on the 1st and 15th 
of every month, of the “ Old EeliableKentucky State Lottery.” 

A legal and constitutional question of much interest in re¬ 
lation to vested rights in lotteries was decided in 1880 by the 
United States Supreme Court. The suit was brought by the 
State of Mississippi to suppress a lottery company known as 
“The Mississippi Educational and Manufacturing Aid So¬ 
ciety,” which had been duly chartered in 1867. The State con¬ 
stitution of 1868 (one year later) prohibited lotteries, and an 
act of 1870 forbade the further sale of tickets by companies 
already authorized. It was claimed by the lottery that this 
act was unconstitutional and void, because it impaired the ob¬ 
ligation of contracts. On appeal to the highest tribunal, the 
United States Supreme Court held that “The contracts which 
the Federal Constitution protects are property rights, not gov¬ 
ernment rights. Lotteries belong to the latter class. That 
lotteries are demoralizing in their effects, however carefully 
regulated, can not be doubted. There can be no question that 
lotteries are proper subjects of the exercise of the State’s gov¬ 
ernmental or police power. They are a species of gambling. 
The right to stop them is governmental, and to be exercised at 
all times by those in power at their discretion.” 


190 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


It appears from a statement compiled for the Massachusetts 
legislature in 1832 that the following States then authorized 
lotteries, with tickets issued under the various schemes as spec¬ 
ified : 


\ 

States authorizing lotteries. 

No. of 
classes. 

Amount of 
tickets 
at scheme 
prices. 

New York. 

80 

$14, 387, 801 
10, 920,166 
8, 332, 583 
7, 837, 621 
5, 313, 056 
3, 462. 900 
2, 212, 540 
670, 263 

Virginia. 

72 

Connecticut. 

88 

Rhode Island. 

68 

Pennsylvania. 

26 

Delaware and North Carolina (joint grants). 

37 

Maryland. 

18 

Delaware. 

32 


Aggregate in nine States. 

421 

53,136, 930 



Besides the above, Maine had two lotteries, and several 
Southern States not named had others. 

The State of Louisiana appears to have become the last 
refuge of the lottery as a system. The constitution of Louisi¬ 
ana, adopted in 1845, prohibited all lotteries and all sales of 
lottery tickets in that State, and the same provision is found 
in the constitution adopted in 1857. But in 1864, yielding to 
a very general desire to open a door for revenue to the impov¬ 
erished treasuries of the State and the city of New Orleans, 
the constitution framed in that year declared u The legislature 
shall have the power to license the selling of lottery tickets 
and the keeping of gambling houses; but in all cases not less 
than $10,000 per annum shall be levied as a license or tax on 
each vender of lottery tickets and on each gambling house, 
and $500 on each tombola.” 

Under this grant of power, that formidable and lucrative 
corporation, the Louisiana State Lottery, was chartered Au¬ 
gust 11, 1868, and it was declared unlawful to sell any other 
lottery tickets in that State, because “ many millions of dol¬ 
lars have been withdrawn from and lost to this State by the 
sale of Havana, Kentucky, and Madrid and other lottery tick¬ 
ets, thereby impoverishing our own people.” The Louisiana 
Lottery was thus made a monopoly as against all others; 
and the consideration named in the act which chartered it 
was the sum of $40,000, to be paid annually for twenty-five 
years, to the treasury of the State. The title of this act is 
“An act to increase the revenues of the State, and to authorize 





















LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 191 


the incorporation and establishment of the Louisiana State 
Lottery Company.” This extensive privilege, through the 
prohibition of lotteries by all other States, has inured to the 
enormous profit of the company chartered. Shrewdly and ably 
managed, it drew to its support very influential financial back¬ 
ers, circulated its attractive advertisements broadcast through¬ 
out the country, established agencies to operate openly where 
it could, and secretly where it could not, and became the 
fruitful source of unknown wealth to its managers. According 
to the statements of the company itself, it formerly sold each 
month, for ten months of each year, 100,000 tickets at $2 each, 
and at its “ extraordinary drawings” for each of the two re¬ 
maining months 100,000 tickets at $10 each, thus making its 
revenue (1,000,000 tickets at $2 and 200,000 at $10) or actual 
receipts $4,000,000 per annum. Out of this vast sum (still by 
its own statement) the company paid in prizes $2,124,000 ; 
commissions and incidentals, $825,000; advertising, $187,500, 
and premium to the State, $40,000; total, $3,176,500. The 
balance, $823,500, represents the probable profits of a year’s 
business. This, however, was in its palmy days of prosperity, 
for the company had its trials and its drawbacks. 

After enjoying about ten years’ lease of its lucrative privi¬ 
lege, the Louisiana legislature passed an act repealing its 
grant, and prohibiting it from drawing any lottery or selling 
any tickets from and after March 31, 1879. 

Here was a dilemma. But the Louisiana Lottery Company 
was equal to the emergency. A State constitutional convention 
was about to meet to revise the fundamental law of the State. 
This body convened, and a clear majority of its members being 
converted to the advantages of the lottery system, it put into 
the new constitution a clause empowering the general assembly 
to grant lottery charters or privileges, provided the sum of 
$40,000 per year should be paid into the State treasury for 
the use of the Charity Hospital of New Orleans. It further 
provided as follows : “And the charter of said company is 
recognized as a contract binding on the State for the period 
therein specified (i. e., twenty-five years, from 1868 to 1893), 
except its monopoly clause, which is hereby abrogated.” This 
constitution was adopted in December, 1879, and was held to 
control the legislative act of repeal, and to reinstate the lot¬ 
tery company in all its privileges, except the exclusive right 
to deal in lottery tickets. In this new constitution, strange to 
say, was a clause to this effect: “ Gambling is declared to be 


192 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


a vice, and the general assembly shall enact laws for its sup¬ 
pression.” There is also a proviso after the rehabilitation 
clause, that “ all charters shall cease and expire on the 1st 
of January, 1895, from which time all lotteries are prohibited 
in the State.” 

In 1890 the company offered the legislature half a million 
dollars a year for an extension of its franchise, increased the 
offer to a million, and finally got through an act for submitting 
to the people a constitutionala mendment giving a twenty-five 
years’ lottery privilege for the sum of $1,250,000 annually. 
This was vetoed by the governor, and long judicial proceed¬ 
ings were instituted. The Lottery Company finally abandoned 
the hope of getting any renewed lease of life in Louisiana, and 
turned its attention to Spanish-American countries less hostile 
to that form of gambling than the United States. 

Besides the many legalized lotteries which have from time 
to time subsisted in various States, there has been a plentiful 
crop of bogus or illegal lotteries, doing a large business in the 
sale of tickets, in nearly every city. Not to refer to the 
“ policy shops” and the dealers in all kinds of chances, whose 
name is legion, there was a “Cheyenne Lottery” exploited 
about 1877, in New York, holding out the alluring bait of 
500,000 prizes, “ every ticket to draw a prize.” About the 
same time the Wyoming Prize Distribution Lottery, the Lara¬ 
mie City Lottery, the Victoria, Canada, Lottery, and the Royal 
New Brunswick Lottery drew in a multitude of victims. 

The history of movements for the suppression of the lottery 
system affords convincing proof of the soundness of public 
opinion upon this subject when once enlightened by facts. 
Although the record here given exhibits a multitude of legis¬ 
lative sanctions to lotteries for public purposes, it presents sur¬ 
prisingly few grants for private lottery schemes, however 
sugar-coated by royalties reserved to the State or locality in 
the interest of the tax-payers. 

Among the various constitutional provisions found on this 
subject, that adopted by Arkansas in its constitution of 1836, 
and reenacted in that of 1874, is a model of brevity. “ No lot¬ 
tery shall be authorized by this State, nor shall the sale of 
lottery tickets be allowed.” This prohibition is amplified in 
other State constitutions, that of Alabama reading as follows: 

The general assembly shall have no power to authorize lotteries or gift 
enterprises for any purpose, and it shall pass laws to prohibit the sale of 
lottery or gift-enterprise tickets, or tickets in any scheme in the nature of 


LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 193 


a lottery, in this State, and all acts or parts of acts heretofore passed by 
the general assembly of this State authorizing a lottery or lotteries, and 
all acts amendatory thereof or supplemental thereto, are hereby avoided. 

The following shows the States that have incorporated in 
their fundamental law a prohibition of lotteries, with date of 
adoption of the constitution now in force. All of the States 
named have forbidden their legislatures to authorize lotteries 
for any purpose, and those marked with a star have prohibited 
the sale of lottery tickets within their limits: 


Alabama. 

. 1875 

* Montana. 

. 1889 

Arkansas. 

. 1874 

Nebraska . 

.. 1875 

California. 

. 1879 

* Nevada. 

.. 1864 

Colorado. 

. 1876 

* New Jersey. 

.. 1844 

Florida. 

. 1885 

* New York. 


Georgia.*. 

. 1877 

* Ohio. 

.. 1851 

Idaho . 

. 1889 

* Oregon. 

. 1857 

Illinois. 

. 1870 

Rhode Island. 

. 1842 

Indiana. 

. 1851 

* South Carolina. 

. 1868 

Iowa. 

. 1857 

South Dakota. 

.. 1889 

Kansas. 

. 1859 

* Tennessee. 

. 1870 

Kentucky. 

. 1891 

* Texas. 


Maryland. 

. 1867 

* Virginia. 


Michigan. 

. 1850 

Washington. 

. 1889 

Minnesota. 

. 1857 

* West Virginia. 

. 1872 

Mississippi. 

. 1890 

Wisconsin. 


Missouri. 

. 1875 




It will be seen that thirty-three States have constitutional 
provisions prohibiting lotteries, all of them except nine extend¬ 
ing the prohibition to the sale of lottery tickets within their 
limits. Of the remaining eleven States the following are living 
under constitutions adopted before the public agitation against 
lotteries became prevalent: Massachusetts, whose constitution 
was framed in 1780; Hew Hampshire, 1792; Vermont, 1793; 
Connecticut, 1818; Maine, 1820, and Delaware, 1831. In 
Pennsylvania, under a constitution adopted in 1873, the laws 
prohibit lottery schemes, but the constitution is silent on the 
subject. 

Lotteries which appeal to the charity as well as the cupidity 
of men have always held out a double attraction to that portion 
of the public who like the fascinating hazard of risking a small 
sum in the hope of gaining a greater. The greed of gambling, 
concealed under the garb of charity or of religion, may be 
covered by a very thin veil, but it is a veil which has pro¬ 
verbially covered multitudes of sins. 

S. Mis. 57-13 






































194 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION. 


The now generally-recognized evils of the lottery were slow 
in making themselves felt in many parts of our country. The 
fact that all, or nearly all the earlier lottery schemes were for 
public benefits served to quiet the consciences of the scrupu¬ 
lous. The lottery for private gain is mainly of very recent 
growth. The lottery for government expenses, ecclesiastical 
buildings or revenues, educational endowments, improved trans¬ 
portation, river and harbor betterments, and public charities, 
was the earliest, and survived the longest. Gradually, however, 
it developed abuses so flagrant as to arouse public reprobation, 
and to open the eyes of all but the wilfully blind. The investor 
in such schemes always stands to lose and the management to 
gain in the direct ratio of their chances, which are preponder¬ 
antly in favor of the lottery. The plain results of indulgence 
in this tempting but surely losing species of gaming were seen 
in thousands of instances. Unreal expectations, visionary 
hopes, distaste for the slow gains of useful labor, con¬ 
suming anxieties, spending beyond means, debt, peculation, 
concealment, bankruptcy—such were some of the oft-repeated 
experiences of the victims of the lottery habit. The poorer 
and more ignorant classes, as is always the case when specu¬ 
lative schemes are launched anywhere, were the greatest suf¬ 
ferers. The rich speculator who invests in lottery tickets 
spends part of his surplus and can afford to lose; the poor 
man spends perhaps his last dollar, and often a borrowed one. 
The deprivation, want, and misery entailed upon families by 
this curse can not be measured. 

Writers on the theory of probabilities have laid down this 
formula: u The value of every expectation is found by multi¬ 
plying the sum expected by the probability of obtaining it.” 
Thus, suppose a lottery scheme where there are 10,000 tickets 
of $10 each and only one prize; then A’s chance of drawing 
the prize is 1 against 9,999, or T oioo expresses his probability 
of winning. Or, suppose a lottery in which the number of 
prizes and of blanks is equal—or 5,000 prizes of $20 each and 
5,000 blanks, the tickets being $20. Here A’s chance of win¬ 
ning or losing is precisely equal. If he wins, he is no better 
off 'an if he had not risked his $20; if he loses, he is $20 worse 
oft*. And however widely the scheme may be varied, the pro¬ 
portion of a purchaser’s disadvantage between these two ex¬ 
tremes will keep pace with the variations. In other words, the 
lottery ticket buyer has always the odds against him, and how- 



LOTTERIES IN AMERICAN HISTORY-SPOFFORD. 195 


ever honestly the drawing may be managed, he stands to lose 
in the direct ratio of the chances, which must always be largely 
in favor of the management, or there would be no motive of 
profit in the scheme. 

To sum up this necessarily concise and imperfect historical 
view, it appears to be established that in the earlier ages of the 
republic lotteries were regarded with general favor, or at 
least with toleration; that schemes or drawings by chance for 
public objects were common throughout the country; that lot¬ 
teries for private gain were very rarely, and in most States 
never permitted to exist; that even those organized for public 
improvements produced trifling pecuniary results to the objects 
ostensibly aided, while drawing from the people heavy sums 
with no returns save to a very few individuals; that the evils 
and abuses developed by the system, even when administered 
under the shield and sanction of the law, led gradually to dis¬ 
credit it profoundly in the public mind; that the change in 
popular opinion was evinced first, by the enactment of pro¬ 
hibitory laws with fines and forfeitures in all the States; next 
by criminal statutes, punishing the promoters of lotteries by 
imprisonment, and finally by making the prohibition of lotter¬ 
ies a part of the constitution in all States except eleven, in 
which, however, lotteries are prohibited by law, save in three 
States, where, moreover, they do not exist; and that the experi¬ 
ence of the past appears to have crystallized into a general 
public conviction that lotteries are to be regarded, in direct 
proportion to their extension, as among the most dangerous 
and prolific sources of human misery. 


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